Posts tagged “Camera Equipment”

I’m trying to find the silver lining, I really am, but over and over, I feel like I may have a resolute “no Adorama” policy in my future.

As I’ve been pondering my bad experience, it’s mostly that I had expectations pretty significantly mismanaged. I mean, if there were a few bullet points that I could have seen earlier, this might have all seemed normal. Here’s what I’d recommend that they put in the welcome packet:

We prefer phone calls to email, even though you might be in Alaska and have a 4-hour time shift.

We will have affiliates call you to sell you on the idea. They will review what equipment you should send us. This is not equipment we are actually interested in.

You will take a copious amount of time to inventory and package these items upon which, you’ll send it our way

We will have a trade-in guy review those sent items and select (possibly a fraction) of the items you sent. Ex: you might send us 30 things, but we might only choose 3 things to offer you a price on. Or, maybe you send us one thing and we offer you a price on that.

We will CALL you with an offer of the items we want making no mention of the other items sent or the process to expect

If you ask for an email articulating the offer, we’ll resent that and send you as few details as possible like “Item: $value” without other commentaries

To clarify (again), we don’t like email. we’d rather have you call us after hours on a cell phone than to be near a keyboard

Because we are wildly busy and important people without time to foster a relationship, we will have secretaries call you to connect you to the person you actually need to talk with

We are east-coasters, so expect terseness.

In many cases, the trade-in value will actually be lower than you expected (ex: $500 teleconverter reconditioned by manufacturer with original box has a $300 offer)

You can send us a list of items that you might want to buy with any credit accrued from your trade

We’ll send you a short response that only shows the items we can price in our system without any additional words like “Item: $value”

We won’t talk about actual availability of said items

The Trade value will be at a better price than MSRP because it is pre-owned equipment

The pre-owned equipment is unlikely to have the original box/bag/manuals/etc but we won’t tell you that unless you ask

Heck, it’s possible that your pre-owned lens will ship in a non-OEM storage bag that didn’t originally come with the item and won’t warn you of that (Ex: Nikon lens shipped in Lowepro g inside of OEM Nikon lens box)

Your trade-in credit will be applied to the value of the equipment you would like to purchase

Any difference over and above the purchase of pre-owned will be charged to the credit card on your account

Any amount that remains in credit can either sit within your account or a check can be sent to you

We will overpack everything and send it back to you in (possibly giant) boxes.

We won’t check in with you at any step of the game to see if you have any questions or if the process was clear and valuable

Any feedback you send to us, either the affiliate or trade-in associate or whoever, will fall on deaf ears and will not garner any follow-up or attention

Thanks for selling to and shopping with Adorama!

Comments? Thoughts? Have you had a similar experience? or perhaps your experience was everything you dreamed of (top-dollar trade-in, great service, etc)? Let me know!